Is 'nimbyism' the new normal in rural Scotland in the push for Net Zero?
Rural Scotland is facing one of the biggest industrial changes it has known to date - and fast.
This is becoming more apparent as I continue to walk round the country’s more remote communities as part of Hay’s Way.
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Hide AdIn Aberdeenshire, where I set off from in March 2024, the “Save Our Mearns” group talked about prime agricultural land disappearing to substation developments for overhead cables. In another part of the region, plans have recently been lodged for one of the largest hydrogen plants in Europe in Kintore.
In East Lothian, residents and the council are protesting against their beloved Lammermuir hills being “covered in turbines.”


In the Scottish Borders, the council ended up objecting to a wind farm three times while the biggest wind farm proposed for the region to date is heading to an inquiry after it objected to that too.
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Hide AdCommunities in Dumfries and Galloway and East Ayrshire and some of the neighbouring regions are in “hotspot” territory for onshore wind and commercial forestry, according to energy chiefs, so you can imagine what’s going on there.
Now that the National Park is not going ahead in Galloway, the region’s locally nicknamed “windfarm alley” might become “windfarm city.”


Even the very north of the Outer Hebrides isn’t immune. Lewis is in its second round of consultations for the vast Northland Power's offshore wind farm Spiorad na Mara which could see 66 turbines, each 380m tall, installed three to eight miles from the shore. The nearby Calanais Stones, the Neolithic site to the west of the island, near to where the development is planned for, won’t have seen anything like it in the 5,000 years they’ve been standing.
SSEN’s proposed upgrade to the overhead lines on Skye has been a magnet for some 130 new turbines on what is considered Scotland’s jewel in the crown when it comes to landscape.
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Hide AdMeanwhile deputy first minister Kate Forbes recently headed a meeting where discussions were held on a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to make the Highlands a centre for renewable energy, creating “tens of thousands of jobs” and secure £100 billion worth of investment.
A new map published earlier this year by Highland Council shows 1,300 major renewable energy developments across the Highlands to show the cumulative impact of the developments, which community groups had been lobbying to have published for years. Campaigners have said it still doesn’t show all of them.


I’ve not made it to Shetland yet, but residents there have warned me the mainland island is “basically an offshore wind farm” because of the Viking development, one of the UK’s largest onshore windfarms.
The green revolution has become heavily politicised. On the one hand, it has potential to bring renewable and affordable energy to communities and to increase job opportunities for Scotland where it hasn’t already done so. Meanwhile, research shows the North Sea oil and gas workforce is projected to shrink by 400 jobs every two weeks for the next five years. Energy prices are also sky high despite some communities living right at the foot of renewable developments for more than two decades.
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Hide AdWhatever political stripe you wear or whatever side of the green revolution you are on, this is a process that is happening now, and at scale.
When I was first writing about the push for Net Zero, “nimby” (not in my back yard) was probably a private thought I had when talking to some rural communities. But now, from walking this country, that thought has morphed into “normal.”
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